OMG the SPLC broke up with the Women's March over anti-Semitism

It's not typical of me to say anything good about the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center, but I will to a degree do so in this post.

The SPLC is the latest in leftist organizations to quietly sever ties with the national Women's March after it was revealed in the New York Times and Tablet that senior leaders of the organization expressed anti-Semitic sentiments in early organizational meetings, and affiliated with the anti-Semitic, anti-LGBT, and anti-women's rights organization, the Nation of Islam, expressing admiration for their crap weasel leader Louis Farrakhan.

The Daily Beast reports that SPLC had quietly withdrawn its support for the Women's March, and the Women's March, in turn, had removed SPLC from its list of co-sponsors. The SPLC was a prominent member of the Women's March coalition for the first two years of marches.

The SPLC, in an effort to avoid looking like fans of Hitler supporters, was closed-mouth about the development in their statement to the Daily Beast, telling reporters that “other projects were a priority,” and that they would continue to be involved with local marches, even if they were cutting ties with the national Women's March.

Now we know the real reason.

Just a few short months ago, the SPLC was expressing unqualified support for the March, claiming, in a press release that:

“As an official partner of the march, the Southern Poverty Law Center stands in solidarity with its organizers’ vision — that ‘women’s rights are human rights’ — and with the march’s mission to bring together communities ‘insulted, demonized and threatened by the rhetoric of the past election cycle,’ the SPLC said in January of 2017, calling itself “dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of our society. Through our core issues, we work to protect the rights of the working poor, LGBT, and undocumented immigrant women whom the Women’s March on Washington seeks to unite.”

But that seems to have changed since reporters at Tablet and the New York Times revealed a significant link between the Women's March's national organizers -- including Linda Sarsour, Tamika Mallory, and Carmen Perez -- and Farrakhan's Nation of Islam, which the SPLC has long-designated as a "hate group," and Louis Farrakhan as a purveyor of anti-Semitism.

A handful of local "Women's March" organizations have also cut official ties to the national Women's March over the revelations of anti-Semitism, and a number of other organizations, besides the Southern Poverty Law Center, have cut ties with the national March pending turnover at their top levels.

According to Tali Goldsheft, the activist who began a major petition drive to encourage left-leaning organizations to cut ties with Sarsour, Mallory, and Perez, more than half of the Women's March's original sponsors and affiliates have dropped off, including several major labor unions, at least two top LGBT-rights organizations (GLAAD and the Human Rights campaign), and one top women's rights organization, NARAL, have all recently dropped off the list of Women's March supporters.

It seems that killing gays under sharia [Islamic law] as Farrakhan believes, doesn't appeal to the LGBT-rights organizations. You will also not see any Jewish organizations sponsoring the March, and the AFL-CIO, NARAL, GLAAD, Human Rights Campaign, NRDC, OXFAM, Greenpeace, Amnesty and other major orgs are no longer listed as @womensmarch partners.

Goldsheft says there are only a handful of "major" sponsors left: Planned Parenthood, an organization that specializes in killing babies for profit. The American Civil Liberties Union, [but if you want to defend your civil liberties, don't look to the ACLU]. And the American Federation of Teachers, an organization that, since 1980 has contributed tens of millions of dollars, 95 percent of which has gone to Democrats. Members' dues underwrite much of the AFT's political support and in 2015, four California teachers sued AFT and its California unit over the use of member dues for political activities, arguing that unions were violating constitutional right to free speech by forcing them to either support union-favored causes and candidates or lose access to important job benefits such as life insurance and disability. The matter was resolved last year by SCOTUS in Janus v AFSCME concluding public sector union fees violate the First Amendment compelling nonmembers to "subsidize private speech on matters of substantial public concern." Unions will, subsequently, need to gain the affirmative consent of individual teachers before enrolling them in the union.

The next national Women's March is set to take place next Saturday, January 19, in Washington, D.C. Turnout is anticipated to be way down from previous years.

Rightfully so.


Will 2019 be the year you follow Brain Flushings and have a few laughs while you get a conservative viewpoint? Let's hope so, because politics is the new NFL without the mindless kneeling and this blog will both inform you and hopefully entertain you bigly.



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Unions may go the way of the phone booths

The Supreme Court of the United States is about to hear a challenge to labor unions having to do with a measly $45 monthly fee and the First Amendment.

SCOTUS may well overturn a four decade-old ruling allowing public sector unions to collect fees from non-members to cover costs of negotiating contracts for all employees. If the conservative majority court rules in favor of ending this violation of the First Amendment, as I see it, this will cost unions billions.

The case will be heard on February 26. It could change the relationship between public unions and the regular working stiffs who want to keep the money they earn rather than pay a union whose bosses make the big bucks.

Lee Saunders

The case was brought by Mark Janus, who works at the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services. He did not appreciate that money was being taken from his paycheck and didn't believe that he should be forced to pay union dues or fees just to be allowed to work for the state.

Janus didn't agree with the AFSCME union's politics and believed that under the First Amendment, he could not be forced to contribute. (Remember, that was the problem Obama thought he'd have with Obamacare, but SCOTUS ruled the payment to be a tax, so it didn't illegally force people to pay into it--it forced them legally to pay into it).

Janus quoted Thomas Jefferson who said to "compel a man to furnish contribution of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical."

The liberal 7th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Janus' argument and the Supreme Court agreed to hear his appeal.

If SCOTUS finds for Janus, it will put the screws to labor unions because without forced payment of fees, union funding would be in the dumper, mainly because unions don't do much for workers and their leaders are raking in the big bucks for themselves and people are getting wise to them.

States might try workarounds by paying employees less rather than deducting from their paychecks, and handing the money saved to the unions, but that sucks and may prove hard to pull off.

"The merits of the case, and 40 years of Supreme Court precedent and sound law, are on our side," touts Lee Saunders, president of AFSCME.

For Saunders, strong unions mean more money for him, and he believes they offer "the strength in numbers [workers] need to fight for the freedoms they deserve," such as the freedom to be forced to pay for something they don't want to pay for, but too bad for them.

The SCOTUS has gone in both directions on the issue of whether someone who benefits from a union can be forced to pay into that union (see Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, 1977; Harris v. Quinn, 2014; and Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, 2016).

In the Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association case, Justice Scalia died before it was adjudicated, but there was an excellent chance the decision would have gone in Friedrichs' favor but it ended in a split decision. 

The Janus case will be the one that can change four decades of union money-grabbing. Many experts see the decision to even take up the case as a sign the court is ready to side with Janus and overrule their precedent. Now with Neil Gorsuch as a member of SCOTUS, it looks like the experts know what they're talking about.



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